David Shearer needs to show leadership

by Cameron Slater on March 29, 2012 at 4:06pm

David Shearer has claimed he doesn’t like gotcha politics, yet yesterday senior MPs Trevor Mallard and Grant Robertson, along with aspiring senior MP and former party president Andrew Little launched a disgraceful, untrue attack on Judith Collins, Simon Lusk and me. They continued their disgraceful attacks in the House today.

This attack is typical of Mallard. Make shit up, throw it, see what sticks, and brazen it out afterwards. These attacks are all based on “an anonymous email from a reliable source”.

The problem for David Shearer is while Mallard and his thuggish henchmen are running this kind of stupid, baseless attack all it does is continue to frame the Labour Party as the Nasty Party. It also detracts from Shearer’s leadership, as he looks like Goff did, when Robertson stood up to him and told him to be soft on Maoris or else.

None of this is going to go well for Labour. Ministers do not threaten defamation action without good cause, and as I know all parties involved in this dispute there is no way there is any link between Judith Collins and Simon Lusk. So school yard bully Mallard will be forced to apologise or will lose a defamation case. In the mean time his nastiness continues to brand Labour as the Nasty Party.

David Shearer’s leadership and chance of being Prime Minister is under threat by this kind of stupid attack where there is no evidence at all of what Mallard is saying. Politicians lying never goes down well with the public, as Anna Bligh recently found out. He should take Trevor aside and tell him to apologise in full immediately, or he will be stripped of his portfolios and returned to the back bench. In fact he should strip him of his portfolios and the Shadow Leader of the House anyway.

I don’t believe that David Shearer has anything to do with these attacks, but he is as much a victim as those Mallard has accused. Just as he was the victim when Mallard got busted scalping tickets on Trademe, and Goff was a victim when Mallard chose to indulge in an asymmetrical war against me where he couldn’t win and I had nothing to lose.

Mallard has a history of defamation, and a history of scurrilous anonymous smears.

Then of course there was the American Bagman smear that went nowhere. He still maintains he was right yet hasnpt produced a shred of evudence to back up his allegations.

Now has taken a step too far, together with Grant Robertson and Andrew Little they have defamed Judith Collins, for which she is suing them, and also Simon Lusk and myself. They ar too cowardly to step outside the house and repeat the smears against me and Simon and so I am left to defend myself via the blog.

David Shearer needs to discipline all three but mostly he needs to yank Mallard back into line. If he doesn’t then his leadership is finished and we will be talking sooner rather than alter about Grant Robertson’s ascendency to Labour’s leadership.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.